Dissociating From Dissociation

Cindy Valmores, Rutgers University

Nature is one of life’s realities. Because reality can be defined as everything that exists in each person’s world, nature should be a part of everyone’s reality. Nature has existed from the beginning of time, and the story of Adam and Eve suggests that part of our origin is in nature. The first man, Adam, was created from the dust of the earth, and Eve was created from his rib. Because we came from the dust of the earth, we should be able to relate to nature. However, we usually experience only a small connection with nature. Martha Stout speaks of dissociation in her essay “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday.” Dissociation is the cause of our lack of ability to connect deeply with nature. In Jon Krakauer’s essay, “Into the Wild,” he includes the story of Chris McCandless, who was able to experience a subtle understanding and a bond with nature in the wilderness, proving that it is still possible for us to experience a bond with nature when dissociating from our comfortable lives. In “The Mind’s Eye,” Oliver Sacks talks about John Hull, who also experiences a close relationship with nature. Although we are no longer able to directly experience nature because we have become denaturalized by modern society, we can still encounter it. The lack of our ability to form a strong bond with nature is caused by dissociation, but dissociation is also the solution to regaining that ability to form a better understanding of, and connection to, nature.

Because of modern technology, living in the natural environment would strike the average person as inconvenient at best and unbearable at worst. Modern technology has enabled us to live in a comfortable environment. Mankind may have been closely linked to nature in the beginning, but with mankind’s imagination, technology and buildings have evolved to shelter us from the natural environment. Living in a natural environment would be inconvenient or even unbearable for us because modern technology has habituated us to such comfort and luxury. Because we are used to comfort, we do not fully appreciate nature because we do not feel or know that we are dependent upon it. With the rise of invention and imagination, the artificial replaced the natural and mankind has become dependent on an artificial nature that it has created through a process known as denaturalization.

In mankind’s pursuit to create better inventions to minimize the troubles of life, it has become a species that has lost touch with its roots. The evolution of technology and buildings has contributed to mankind’s dissociation from nature. Houses and buildings evolved into developed towns and cities. These towns and cities have taken the place of nature. Today, most of us think of nature as just being outdoors. We still have a relationship with nature, but it is often a distant relationship. Stout makes analogies to nature in her essay because her readers can relate to it. She begins her essay, telling her readers to “imagine that [they] are… locked in [their] house[s]… the drifted snow higher than [their] windows, blocking the light of both moon and sun,” making an analogy between being trapped and dissociation (579). Stout’s patient Seth also uses an analogy to nature when he compares dissociation to being out in the ocean away from the beach or civilization. Seth states that “[he] keeps on drifting backwards, the beach gets smaller… the ocean gets bigger, and when [he has] drifted out far enough, the beach disappears” (Stout 594). This is usually the extent to which we experience a connection to nature. We understand terms like snow, rain, and ocean, but we do not have a true bond with nature because we have dissociated ourselves from it to experience a comfortable, artificial world.

Knowing that the comfortable environment we enjoy is a product of dissociation from nature, we can conclude that in order to return to this nature, we must dissociate from those comforts. In Sacks’ essay, he includes many different accounts of people who are able to reconstruct their lives after losing sight. Of these accounts, the story of John Hull is the most unique. Hull had gradually loss his sense of sight. Unlike others, he ‘extricated’ his visual imagery to develop his other senses. Without trying to develop his visual imagery, he formed a strong bond with nature. “With his new intensity of auditory experience (or attention), along with the sharpening of his other senses, Hull [came] to feel a sense of intimacy with nature, an intensity of being-in-the-world, beyond anything he knew when he was sighted” (Sacks 476). Sacks emphasized the word ‘attention,’ placing parentheses around the word, implying that Hull did not have that attention for nature and his surroundings until he had lost his sight. Without the intention of feeling an intimacy with nature, Hull had dissociated from his comfort zone. Hull’s comfort zone was trying to be like everyone else. Instead of developing his visual imagery to remain a “visual person,” Hull decided to develop his other senses. Being normal was perceived as having the ability to visualize, but Hull stopped trying to pass as ‘normal’ and he found a new freedom. He no longer had to see to believe. Hull had formed a bond with nature through dissociating from vision, which once gave him a sense of comfort. Through dissociation from that comfort, Hull believed in and felt nature’s existence without having to visualize it.

When people become restless and dissatisfied with the artificial world they are born into, some are brave enough to try and regain their connection with the nature that they have lost. Some people realize that they do not have a true bond with nature, so they try to find a connection by dissociating from the comforts of the artificial world. Krakauer talks about conservationist John Muir in his essay. Muir is an adventurous man who decided to climb Mt. Katahdin. “The disquietude [Muir] felt on Katahdin’s granite heights inspired some of his most powerful writing and profoundly coloured the way he thought thereafter about the earth in its coarse, undomesticated state” (504). Muir dissociated from the comforts of the artificial world and experienced the adventure and wonder of nature. Muir’s story is similar to Hull’s because they both felt an affinity with nature after dissociating from comfort, and they gained a better understanding of it.

In Krakauer’s essay, he mainly speaks of Chris McCandless who tried to dissociate from civilization and ‘things that came easy.’ He wanted to “explore the inner country of his own soul… [But] an extended stay in the wilderness inevitably [directed his] attention outward as much as inward… [It] is impossible to live off the land without developing both a subtle understanding of, and a strong emotional bond with, that land and all it holds” (Krakauer 304). McCandless’ purpose was not to ponder nature. His goal was to learn about himself but he also learned about the land, and he formed a bond with it. It was inevitable that he would feel a strong bond with nature because he was away from civilization. He was alone with nature, no longer in his comfort zone, and he had to learn how to live off of it. Although McCandless was able to experience nature, he was not prepared to survive through it.

Because we are accustomed to an artificial world of comfort, we must be prepared to enter the natural world. Many people criticized McCandless because he was not prepared to survive in the wilderness. McCandless had tried to live entirely off the country without “bothering to master beforehand the full repertoire of crucial skills” (303). He was not prepared and did not know how to survive because he was brought up in a town where he did not have to hunt food to stay alive. McCandless had been too accustomed to a world of comfort to enter the natural world without knowledge of crucial skills. He did not bring a map with him, believing that the land was ‘incognita.’ Although McCandless dissociated from the comfort of the artificial world, he still dissociated within his own mind. His mind dissociated from the reality that the land had already been discovered. When addressing dissociation, Stout states that “the present is perceptually and emotionally the past” (581). McCandless’ mind was still living in the past, when the land had not yet been discovered. Because McCandless did not have a map, he did not know where he was and he was not able to survive through his experience with nature. McCandless had gone too far in his pursuit to experience nature. He was not familiar with the natural world, and he was not prepared to dissociate fully from civilization and comfort.

Perhaps John Hull was prepared to enter the natural world because he gradually lost his sight and gradually dissociated from his dependency of sight. Hull stated that “Rain has a way of bringing out the contours of everything; it throws a coloured blanket over previously invisible things” (Sacks 576). When Hull was sighted, nature was in a sense invisible to him; he knew it existed, but he never really paid attention to it. Nature is also invisible to us; we know it exists, but do we ever really pay attention to it or have an understanding of it? When Hull paid attention to nature, he was able to feel “more in the world.” Both Hull and Muir felt that their bonds with nature “colored” the way that they perceived their lives. They were both prepared to experience nature because they slowly dissociated from comfort. Muir did not go out into the natural world with the intention of getting away from civilization. McCandless just went too far in his pursuit to experience nature. Perhaps he should have tried a more gradual approach, such as Hull and Muir. Nonetheless, all three men were able to experience a true bond with nature. But this bond with nature not only required dissociation from the comforts of the natural world, but also a readiness or preparation for the experience of it.

A true connection to nature is a connection to the reality of life and its mysteries. In

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